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The modern fencing sabre is a descendent from the old cavalry sabre. It is quick and light, and points may be scored either with the point, as at foil or epee, or with the edges of the blade, since the cavalry sabre had cutting edges (a "cut"). The target area is the whole of the body above the waist, including the arms and legs.
The sabre follows the same convention of right-of-way as the foil. Because the parries must defend against cuts from many angles, they often need fairly large movements. Consequently they may be more easily deceived by the attacker, and there tends to be an advantage in attacking rather than playing a defensive game. Good sabreurs tend to have fast fingerwork, and the blade may change direction more than once in an attack, deceiving an opponent's attempts to parry.
Because a fencer can score with the edge of the blade, sabre fencing looks quite a lot different to the other two weapons. One problem with sabre, until recently, was that too many hits were being scored by one fencer dashing forward and waggling his blade up and down at his opponent: this is extremely hard to parry effectively, and any attempt to counter attack into it tended to fail because the attacking fencer still had right of way. The rules were changed to prohibit a fencer from crossing his feet when going forward - effectively stopping them running at the opponent - and this has negated this kind of attack and put the emphasis back on good bladework, making the sport better to watch as well as fight.
Quaint fact number three: The only reason the body below the waist is not part of the target is that when fighting on horseback it was considered unsporting to hit the horse. |
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